49.  To be determined by our own Judgment, is no Restraint to Liberty.

This is so far from being a restraint or diminution of freedom, that it is the very improvement and benefit of it; it is not an abridgment, it is the end and use of our liberty; and the further we are removed from such a determination, the nearer we are to misery and slavery.  A perfect indifference in the mind, not determinable by its last judgment of the good or evil that is thought to attend its choice, would be so far from being an advantage and excellency of any intellectual nature, that it would be as great an imperfection, as the want of indifferency to act, or not to act, till determined by the will, would be an imperfection on the other side.  A man is at liberty to lift up his hand to his head, or let it rest quiet:  he is perfectly indifferent in either; and it would be an imperfection in him, if he wanted that power, if he were deprived of that indifferency.  But it would be as great an imperfection, if he had the same indifferency, whether he would prefer the lifting up his hand, or its remaining in rest, when it would save his head or eyes from a blow he sees coming:  it is as much a perfection, that desire, or the power of preferring, should be determined by good, as that the power of acting should be determined by the will; and the certainer such determination is, the greater is the perfection.  Nay, were we determined by anything but the last result of our own minds, judging of the good or evil of any action, we were not free.

50.  The freest Agents are so determined.

If we look upon those superior beings above us, who enjoy perfect happiness, we shall have reason to judge that they are more steadily determined in their choice of good than we; and yet we have no reason to think they are less happy, or less free, than we are.  And if it were fit for such poor finite creatures as we are to pronounce what infinite wisdom and goodness could do, I think we might say, that God himself cannot choose what is not good; the freedom of the Almighty hinders not his being determined by what is best.

51.  A constant Determination to a Pursuit of Happiness no Abridgment of Liberty.

But to give a right view of this mistaken part of liberty let me ask,—­Would any one be a changeling, because he is less determined by wise considerations than a wise man?  Is it worth the name of freedom to be at liberty to play the fool, and draw shame and misery upon a man’s self?  If to break loose from the conduct of reason, and to want that restraint of examination and judgment which keeps us from choosing or doing the worse, be liberty, true liberty, madmen and fools are the only freemen:  but yet, I think, nobody would choose to be mad for the sake of such liberty, but he that is mad already.  The constant desire of happiness, and the constraint it puts upon us to act for it, nobody, I think, accounts an abridgment of liberty, or at least an abridgment